To Ling Chin: Thanks For Nothing! Naomi Claussen by ARthur

Chapter 6
Chapter 6

Still wrestling with Amanda, Ruby decided to hurt the Wall Street attorney where she was most vulnerable. Using her only free hand, Ruby maneuvered it to Amanda’s back, where she found, through her blouse, the bottom of the rear band on her Wonderbra. Giving it a hard yank upwards, Amanda winced in pain as the Wonderbra pinched her breasts ever more sharply than normal. She dropped Ruby, who yanked down Amanda’s pantyhose to retard the lady lawyer from pursuing her as she scampered away.

"Miserable brat!" Amanda screamed.

In her subterranean crawl under the tables, Zephyr thought she was making good time, but an apparent wrong turn put her face-to-face with Teresa. The breasty witch grabbed the AAAARG girl by the seat of her dress as she attempted to retreat, and pushed her prostrate to the carpet.

Trying to live up to her nickname as "The Tooth," Zephyr nonetheless found she couldn’t turn around enough to take a frothing bite from Teresa’s arm. Teresa slowly moved the girl to face her, and with her free hand touched Zephyr’s nose with her index finger. "Now, I have something for you," she cackled. "Think fast, Zeph," the girl thought to herself. Spotting a white cloth item within reach, Zephyr grabbed it, and attempted to blind Teresa with it. The item turned out to be a size 48 men’s jockey short lost by a regressing customer. It fit easily over Teresa’s head, who reacted as if it wasn’t quite sanitary to the smell. Taking advantage of the break in Teresa’s grip, Zephyr quickly crawled away.

Elsewhere in the dining area, Ling was mounting another personal assault on the witches. Having taken the shiny carving knife Ryoko had earlier used to ward off a flaming ball of rejuvenating magic, Ling was using it in its more traditional roll in attempting to subdue Petula. "Drop your weapons and surrender," Ling ordered the witch, who merely flicked her middle finger, causing Ling’s nose to burn. This act caused Ling to stumble backward and drop the knife.

As Ryoko ran the retrieve it, she found Petula targeting her with a full-blown "age-capture" spell. Without a reflective weapon, she felt that her time had come, and that by evening, she’d be loading up on (and in) diapers. Ryoko began to close her eyes, anticipating the worst.

But as Petula completed her delivery, Ryoko heard Ruby scream, "Use this!" She caught Ruby’s mirror at the last moment and succeeded in intercepting the spell. But unable to reflect it back at Petula, Ryoko only sent it toward the ceiling.

But Juggz also had a ceiling-mounted mirror, which reflected the light-riding magic into a suspended cut glass ball. This prism broke the spell into a rainbow of spectrums, which rained down on the dining area.

The yellow ray hit Ruth, while a red ray bathed Teresa, who having just pulled the undershorts from her head, had come up for air from under the table. And both underwent strange metamorphosis.

Ruth slowly began to shrink – not turning into a child, just shrinking. She retained her womanly shape as she grew smaller – from 68 inches, to 42 inches, to 30 inches, then 20 inches. All the while, her clothes became baggier, more ill fitting, before they began to drop off. She dropped under 1 foot, and finally stopped at 3-inches tall. "She’s no bigger than a mouse," Ling cried.

Boxing away her now larger clothing, Ruth was momentarily trapped when Ruby hoisted up her panties. The girls snickered at the swaying movement in the undergarment until Ruth emerged from one leg hole, landed on the floor, and took off. Ruby gave pursuit under tables and around walls.

As for Teresa, she retained her height, but deflated in other ways. Her chest flattened out. A puzzled Teresa checked out the area, verifying that her breasts had vanished. In fact, her body was plumping out; losing what figure it had, while her hips moved closer. Her cheeks puffed out and her nose shrank to a mere button. Tongue-motion in her mouth verified she had but eight teeth. Her sexy, top-heavy body was gone! She had gone to the early side of puberty and was now in effect a 5 ft. 9 in. toddler, with her adult clothing either stretched or hanging baggily on various parts of her anatomy. "What?" Teresa started to say, revealing an octave-higher voice.

"The cut glass ball spread the spell out into its component parts, directing the size reduction elements on Ruth, and the youthening properties on Teresa," Petula observed. But Ling was less technical. "Do you want Minnie Mouse or the Little Mermaid on your training pants," she yelled at Teresa.

Realizing she no longer met the main physical requirement for being a Juggz waitress, the flat-chested Teresa threw a near childish temper tantrum. "Let’s destroy this place," she yelled at Petula. "But we don’t have spells to overtly kill people. We can only make them too small, helpless and ridiculous to be a further threat to us," Petula reminded her. "We must destroy all these mirrors screwing up the effectiveness of our magic. Use the fireball spell, which evaporates wood, metal and fiber, but is ineffective on human flesh – except for flying debris," Teresa snarled.

"Not the restaurant. Don’t destroy the restaurant," Amanda pleaded. "It’ll cost a lot to repair the damage as is. I’m not sure my insurance will cover what’s already been destroyed." But Teresa was adamant. "Destroy the décor. Now!" she said. And Petula joined her.

Heated balls of destructive magic exploded from their fingers, carefully hitting peripheral frames and mountings to take out the ceiling mirror, the cut glass ball, and the wall-mounted mirrors. By then, some the AAAARG girls had fled for cover under the tables. But not 3-year-old Ling.

"Surrender! I’ve got you covered," yelled Ling, now standing behind Petula, and pressing a salad fork against the witch’s lower rump. "You realize that the tines on that fork are rounded and won’t pierce flesh" the witch responded, spinning around and lunging at her tiny adversary.

Barely missed by Petula, Ling scampered away. Petula responded by launching into the "age-capture" spell, while Teresa used a fireball to eliminate a serving cart where Ling sought cover. As Petula finished her delivery, Ryoko leapt with her mirror into the area between witch and toddler, barely catching the light-riding spell, and reflecting it back to sender.

Blasted onto her rump by the returning spell, Petula began to rejuvenate. Feeling herself sinking into her shirt and watching her green age vapors flow from her body like water from a geyser, Petula went into shock. She just sat there, her eyes crossed, her mouth becoming ajar. Ryoko and Ling could see her teeth recede into her gums, until only two lower teeth remained. A bit of drool descended from the now pasty-faced 1-year-old infant’s mouth onto of cup her now immense 42D bra.

Ling ran up to the baby, checked her face, then turned around and yelled, "The other place may be Training Bra City, but this place is becoming Training Pants City!" This only netted her a flying coffeepot from Amanda, which Ling avoided by being pulled out of its path by an exasperated Ryoko.

"This is no place for empty bravado," an exhausted Ryoko lectured the 3-year-old CIA pest. "This is dangerous. You could be infantized – or worse, become only a glint in your daddy’s eye," she added. But Ling only ran away laughing about how her daddy used a glint brush on his coats, and continuing to look for physical weapons. "No more rescues. Let her get hit," Ryoko sighed.

"Only one more to go," Zephyr called to her cohorts.

Angered all the more by these turns of events, Teresa turned her rage at Amanda. "I’m sick of you sitting by while the real witches do all the work. You studied Hedweigian techniques in your youth. You help or else!" she squeakingly bellowed, now sounding like soprano car alarm.

"But I don’t remember any of that stuff. It was a long time ago," Amanda pleaded. Teresa reached into Ruth’s abandoned clothing, found her copy of the Pocket Guide to Hedweigian Magic, and tossed it to Amanda. "Now help me wipe out these brats," Teresa growled.

As Amanda nervously studied a page of the booklet, Teresa let loose some more destructive fire blasts, blowing apart tables and scorching some carpet. She even blew up the portrait of the restaurant chain’s founder, Gerhard Juggz.

Teresa eventually flushed out Zephyr and Naomi. Skittering to avoid being singed, the two ended up standing back-to-back between Teresa and Amanda, with no place to run sideways.

"Amanda at 12:00," Naomi told Zephyr. "Teresa at 6:00," countered Zephyr, who suddenly remembered that her mirror was earlier broken, and she had no weapon to defend herself or Naomi. And no Ryoko or Ruby in sight. "This may be it! Guess I’ll see you in our new crib tomorrow," Zephyr bravely shuddered.

"I’ll save you," a tiny voice added. Running into the line of fire was Ling, wearing a tureen on her head and carrying handfuls of cutlery. She began to throw them at the two witches. "My illustrious career, fading in the presence of idiots," Zephyr thought, as she now had to figure a way to get three girls out of harm’s way.

"How about this?" Naomi said, producing the gizmo she earlier claimed would produce a light warping magnetic field. "But its never been tested for effectiveness against Hedweigian spells," Zephyr protested. She nonetheless moved the gizmo to her right hand.

Zephyr then surveyed the situation. Teresa, with her bra now flopping uselessly on her overgrown child-like frame, grinned broadly on one side, while Amanda, still holding the Pocket Guide, looked menacingly from the other. Both witches launched into the technique of the "age-capture" spell, intended to be the coup de grace against their enemies. And then they delivered.

Zephyr used the fingernail on her thumb to flip the switch on the gizmo. She was amazed as the bright spells arched around the three girls to avoid the magnetic field that had apparently been created.

Avoiding the girls, the spells continued toward the witches on the opposite sides of the target. Hit in the chest, Teresa erupted into age vapors like a volcano. Her head rapidly dropped into her shirt, and she proceeded to stumble around like a headless chicken. Finally tripping on her loosening athletic shoes, Teresa bumbled around inside her shirt before finally poking her now 1-year-old infant’s head out. Her once magnificent lacy bra was wrapped around the top of her head, looking all the world like a baby bonnet. Appropriately, she began crying like a baby.

Amanda, however, only collapsed into a 3-year-old girl. And because Teresa executed a perfect spell with clothes morph, her businesswoman’s power suit still fit her reduced body. She staggered around, trying to adjust to toddler’s feet in high-heel pumps, while her tight Wonderbra rubbed vertically on her flat chest.

Naomi smiled as she walked toward the no longer towering Amanda. "I think you have something of mine – in that Faberge cigar humidor. Now you’ll tell me where it is," Naomi said. Shocked that the little girl now loomed over her, Amanda ran toward the door, stopping only momentarily to kick off the high-heel pumps that were impeding her now toddler-proportion legs. Naomi pursued.

"Looks like I saved the day for you," Ling cheered as a piece of squashed cheesecake flew by her head. "Rats! Barely missed," Ruby thought, as she reemerged empty-handed from the eatery’s storage area.

Outside, Naomi looked for Amanda, realizing that her only chance of finding that humidor was to tail the reduced Wall Street attorney. But where was she?